“Atalanta barely went past the centre-circle, but unfortunately we pay for every mistake that we make at the moment. The lads were afraid and during the break I urged them to shake off the outside world and think only of the football.

“With the great strength of this group, we were able to bring home the victory. GoranPandev needs a good pitch to give his best and he benefited from it today. I am happy he scored, as he had been very unlucky recently.”

Cavani also ended his eight-match goal drought amid reports his crisis was down to a love triangle.

“Edi has always been concentrated on the field. Nobody should dig too deep into his personal issues,” warned Mazzarri.

“I want sent off at the end because the referee thought I was protesting against the four minutes of stoppages, but I was actually complaining about a free kick, that’s all.”

Napoli maintained their two-point lead over Milan and the Coach does not want to look too far into the future.

“We are not already thinking about the game with Milan. We had the same discussions before the Juventus match and then we dropped points against Udinese and Sampdoria, so we have to take it one game at a time.”